


this last bitter cold

by deadlikemoi



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Christmas Eve, Established Friendship, F/M, Fluff, Pining, Reylo - Freeform, Subterfuge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-04
Updated: 2019-12-04
Packaged: 2021-02-26 01:01:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,808
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21664855
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deadlikemoi/pseuds/deadlikemoi
Summary: Based on a prompt from Reylo_prompts: "Rey’s heater gives out and she calls Ben to come over. He thinks she called him to fix the heater, when in truth she called him to come keep her warm."
Relationships: Rey & Ben Solo | Kylo Ren, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 10
Kudos: 145
Collections: Reylo Prompt Fills (@reylo_prompts)





	this last bitter cold

Rey’s apartment is what her friends lovingly refer to as something as close to cockroach heaven as is possible in a fourth floor walk-up. If it wasn't for this apartment, she might not have the toned legs and bum that men seem to appreciate. Plus it is the first housing that has ever been truly hers which means she would love it even if it was little more than a lean-to. 

But it is days like today—when her radiator has swung wildly from turning the small one bedroom into a sauna to giving her freezer a run for its money—that she hates having so little money to put toward the place where she lays her head. 

She has consulted Google a number of times for a quick fix that she can accomplish all on her own, but nothing seems to work. The temperature has plummeted lower and lower as day turns to night, and she goes to sleep layered under sweats, hoodies, and every single blanket she possesses. Sleep lingers at the edge of her consciousness as she spends hours in the dark, shivering and scowling, until the alarm on her phone goes off and she can return to the heated depths of the garage she works in. 

Her boss, Han, instructs her to give him a call if her heat still isn't functioning properly when she gets home. We’ll throw together a guest room, he says, but she knows the direction comes from his wife, Leia. Leia treats her like a daughter she has always longed for and said as much during a holiday party she was invited to the year before. 

But instead of sleeping on borrowed linens for the night, Rey’s mind has been toiling away while her hands were busy, so it isn't exactly a disappointment when she takes her first inhale and watches her breath steam up the air in front of her face as she exhales. 

The muscles in her face slowly move into a smile that threatens to heat her fully, inside and out, but no—that can't happen, she has other plans. Her iPhone is in her hand like always, the pop socket a cosmic nebula that's held between her middle and ring fingers as she types out a message, her teeth slowly biting down into her bottom lip. 

>Rey: my heat still isn't working  
>Rey: can you come ober pleeeeeease?  
>Rey: *over

Somewhere, most likely across town, sitting in his cushy corner office, Ben is probably laughing at her typos and errors just like he always does. He says it's cute, but really she knows that he likes being better than her at something. It might even be on his resume under special skills. 

The banner message pops up at the top of her screen as she starts to gather up her blankets and all the heavy clothes she owns, a few of them belong to someone else entirely—someone taller and with long, luscious, dark hair that she enjoys running her fingers through for hours on end of he happens to allow it that day. 

>Ben: I can be over around 5:30  
>Ben: Will you survive until then?

That is over an hour and a half away. Her skin has already erupted in goosebumps with each and every hair standing on end. If it's one thing Ben Solo is good for, it’s his own personal toaster oven he keeps in his abdomen behind those ridiculous muscles. 

>Rey: ill figure something out 

It doesn't help matters that she's been isolated out in the friend zone, just beyond the shark filled waters, since she met Han and Leia’s son those three years ago. 

Climbing into the shower is the only way she’ll stay warm and awake while she waits for the lumbering giant to cross her doorstep, so she knots all her hair on top of her head and closes her eyes as she steps inside the steamy shower. She hasn't chanced a look at what the temperature might be, but she still knows it's too frigid to spend even barely a few minutes with wet hair. 

Time seems to pass in large leaps while she stands there, and the last of the hot water is starting to fade when she hears a knock on her door. 

No one comes to this side of town unless they're looking for someone they know or a cheap place to buy drugs which means that she knows who it is. 

“Hello?” Safety is so important and her landlord is too cheap to install peep holes, so a round of knock knock questions and answers are required before she will open the door. Besides she will never open a door to anyone but him while dressed in only a towel. 

“Serial killer Ben Solo here with your daily delivery of blood and guts.” Something bumps against the cheap wood of her door. Her hands shake from both the cold and the excitement of seeing him again. It’s been at least three weeks since they were last face to face in the parking lot outside of Han’s garage when she’d locked up the place and forgot her apartment keys inside. A funny sequence of events is how he phrased it when she’d called him to open the door because it was far too late to wake up his parents. 

Little things like that, small moments any normal person might overlook, happen to them all the time. She knows he doesn't believe in coincidence or happenstance, so she is fairly sure that he doesn't—or won't—see her as the master puppeteer. 

Faster than a flash of lightning, she unlocks the three deadbolts and the chain to grant him entry. “Please come in. I need to run and get dressed, so remember to lock those, if you don't mind.” 

She manages to catch his quick glance up her body before she hightails it to her bedroom where all her clothes are and she can hide behind her door while the blush on her cheeks is one of the only things keeping her body warm. 

“Where is your radiator?” Ben calls out from the living room, Rey is 100% sure that he hasn't walked a step beyond where he was when she walked away. 

What a chivalrous idiot. 

“Right in front of the closet. Why?” 

Clad in his hoodie along with her own sweatpants and thigh crew socks, Rey finds him squatting down and staring at the radiator as if it stuffed a $50 lobster up its dress. Her body doesn't function properly when she herself is staring down at a pair of expensive slacks molded over his finely sculpted, manly ass. 

“What are you doing?” 

He lets out a grunt and would've hit his head on the thick steel and necessitated a rush to the local emergency room as she “borrowed” car if he was a few inches closer. 

“I came to try and fix your radiator,” he responds with a kick to the toolbox she recognizes as belonging to his father. 

“You came to fix my radiator…” Her voice trails off as Ben’s eyes widen when he surely recognizes what she's wearing though he doesn't say anything to put a name to it. 

An incredulous look comes over his face, “Isn’t that why you asked me to come over?” 

This is where she might twiddle her thumbs as her anxiousness rises higher and higher, but her hands are swallowed up in the giant sleeves of the college hoodie so she can do little else besides rock back and forth on the balls of her feet while she thinks of a good response. 

“I needed your help.” 

Now he stands up to his full height, but doesn't move any closer. “Help with what?” 

A shiver runs up her spine, and she turns to grab one of the fluffy blankets from the couch. “I need help staying warm, Ben.” 

The unspoken question _“do you think you can help with that?”_ hangs heavy in the air between them. 

He is silent for a few ticks of her heart, simply watching her as she wraps herself into the blanket tighter and tighter. 

“It's freezing in here, Rey. You can't stay here with no working heat source. You will freeze to death,” he points out, huffing and puffing as if he has run a mile or two around the small space of her apartment. 

“I’ll be okay, Ben.” She shrugs her shoulder and assumes that will be enough to end the conversation there, but he is an angry bulldog when something is irritating him. 

“Do you know today’s date?”

One day doesn't differ much from the other for her unless her phone reminds her about some important date listed on her iCal. “No,” is her direct answer. 

Whatever was in his hands is dropped down into the heavy metal of the toolbox, clattering loudly as it knocks into the vast depths of screwdrivers, wrenches, and the like. It wouldn't surprise her if Jimmy Hoffa or King Tut’s treasure are buried down at the bottom. 

Her phone is still in her room, sitting on her bed under the clothes she wore to work today. 

“I don't have my phone on me,” she falters. 

Ben offers his own, the large iPhone 11 looks the size of a small candy bar in his massive hands, but a king sized bar in hers, and she takes it with only a slight brush of their fingers. The electric zing that results from the that momentarily warms her for a second. 

Holding the phone, she touches the screen, bringing it to life, and though she knows she's meant to be looking at the date, it's the background that has her full attention. 

She recognizes the picture immediately—it was taken during one of the summer cookouts that Han and Leia hosted when the temperature skyrocketed, they allowed anyone and everyone use of their expensive in-ground pool that the couple only used to swim laps as exercise. Leia had tearfully mentioned how she wished to have grandchildren running and screaming around the backyard by that point in her life. Everyone saw the audible swallow Ben took when he couldn't miss overhearing that comment. 

Later in the day, she and Ben had been sitting on the bench of the picnic table discussing something ridiculous, the exact topic escapes her now, but she remembers laughing at a comment he made and looking up to see the horror on his face before the family dog—a Newfoundland mix named Sir Chewie of the Baccas, the Second after Han’s best friend—collided with the two of them while on the hunt for a rogue frisbee. Both of them and the dog ended up in a pile on the grass, the two humans laughing loudly enough to draw attention from almost all in attendance while the dog enjoyed the scratches Rey bestowed upon him. 

She hadn't known that someone snapped a picture of them in that moment, but the evidence is right in front of her face. 

What is it she was doing? Why does she have his phone? 

Looking up, the first thing she recognizes is the color high on his cheeks. 

“Did you see the date?” He wonders and immediately receives a response by way of a shake of her head. 

Again she presses on the screen and finally her eyes catch the date directly under the time. How did she miss how far into December they've gone? 

“It's Christmas Eve,” her voice erupts from her in more of a murmur than anything else. All her plans and ideas have flown out the window in the space of a moment, the amount of time it took for her eyes to connect with that picture, and she would be shocked if the temperature in the room has remained stagnant. She feels like she’s been set aflame. 

“It is and you asked me to come help you,” he reminds her. 

“Did I?” 

Ben accepts his phone back and quickly opens up their text thread. “I thought you did.” It seems like the wind has gone out of his sails just as quickly as her own were reinforced. His jaw moves back and forth as he scrolls up and up and up. 

The couch is two steps behind her, but she is only able to get back one with her arms open to him, “come keep me warm, please,” and he is on her faster than the speed that light is able to travel. His body is large, the width of his shoulders seemingly impossible when compared to the span of his hips where her hands fall instinctively. 

“How did you know?” Ben asks as he hovers over her with all his weight focused on the one hand pushed down into the couch cushion, her own body ready to accept him, but somehow he maintains just a hair's breadth of space between them. 

“Know what?” 

“That I asked Santa for you this year for Christmas” is his answer.

Her mind is wiped completely blank at that, pushed into a hard reboot while she just stares up at him, utterly dumbfounded. 

“Did I—have I broken you?” He asks it with a laugh, but she can see the slight wave of terror starting to crash over him. 

Instead of responding verbally, her head moves once to the left and then once to the right before she surges up just enough to convince him without words. 

Rey has never been one to romanticize life; a rough childhood and a few stumbles throughout her teen years taught her life’s cruel lessons the hard way, but while she doesn't hear wedding bells or see fireworks with this kiss, her heartbeat does jump quickly into the stratosphere, making her nearly lightheaded from the sensation of his lips brushing hers. 

He is struck dumb for a minute himself, but the tenacious way he wraps himself around her until she is merely an inch away from being smothered speaks more truth than his words ever could. 

The second his lips move away from her mouth, she finds that his lips are coated in some sort of truth serum and she is unable to keep any thought to herself. 

“I’ve been into you for so long,” she whines into the air when his mouth begins to leave sucking kisses down her neck. Her eyes drift closed. “Probably from the first moment I saw you, to be honest. I couldn't believe my eyes, couldn't believe that Han and Leia failed to tell me how fucking gorgeous their son is. I wasn’t prepared at all.” 

There are no more kisses, no more touches even, so she pries her eyes open again to find him staring down at her, fully in awe at what she just said. 

Nothing in her head is working correctly at the moment so she can't remember if she said something stupid or not. 

“What's wrong? What happened?” The panic starts to set in, slowly at first, but building faster and faster. 

Emotions start to war with each other over his face before he can fully get himself in check. “You are the most beautiful woman I’ve ever met and it's ridiculous that you should ever consider wanting to be with me.” She opens her mouth to argue, but he quickly cuts her off. “Since we know I’m on board with your keeping warm plan, how about a rain check?” 

Getting to this point never seemed possible before and she would be lying to herself if she said she is alright with stopping now. “But I don't want to stop.” 

“I didn't say stop.” His lips find hers again and linger far longer than a quick kiss is meant to be. “The rain check is pausing now to get your stuff together and come back to my place where we can be together and warm without worry of walking pneumonia or frostbite. How does that sound?” 

A smile brightens up her face and a nearly matching one can be found on his face too. “I plan to cash in this rain check immediately, but let me grab a few things first.” 

The time she spends putting together an overnight bag is less than an episode of a sitcom, approximately twelves minutes, five of which are spent dithering over whether to she should bring the pie she made a few nights before. 

Everyone has those specific few things that people always like about them and for her, it's her ability to work with her hands. Baking usually calms her which is why she made this pie recently when she was worrying about Christmas and presents and all the parties she doesn't want to attend alone. 

It seems that she won't have to worry about that last bit anymore. 

Ben is on the phone when she carries her whole lot out into the living room. Immediately she knows it's one of his parents as the furrow in his brow is ever present when they're around. Maybe she doesn't know what it's like to have a biological family, but this handpicked family of hers is better than any the fates could give her by natural selection. 

She hasn't worried about changing clothes—more than anything she wants to be free of any and all clothing by the time they hit his door in thirty odd minutes. The chill is starting to set in again while she stands around and waits for him to hang up.

In the past she has always been patient, waiting for her parents, waiting for kinship, waiting for someone to truly love her. She has finally found her people so there is no need to keep waiting. 

Her mind works quickly at finding a remedy to this current problem. 

Coming to stand in front of where he sits leaned back on her couch, his eyes are on her instantly, following her every movement as she slowly pulls the hem of his hoodie up her stomach inch by inch. Ben has always had an expressive face, it's one of the many things that makes him so alluring, but now she finds it almost laughable.

His face morphs into a mix of hunger and a little bit of shame, surely something to do with his parents’ relationship with the girl whose stomach is fully barred to him, and he has the good sense to rush them off the line. “Dad, yeah—sorry. Something’s uhh… come up. Gotta go.” 

The thick material is just at her nipples, exposing the swell of her breasts to his eyes, when he lunges forward and drags her into his lap. 

“You're a heathen,” he grumbles with an unabashedly large grin. 

Rey tucks her face up against his neck and squeals loudly enough to pierce ear drums when his ice cold hands touch her naked skin. There is no excessive show of force when he pushes himself up, collects her in a bridal carry, and effortlessly walks down to his car with all the things she packed. 

If she is utterly and completely mesmerized by him then it is only partially against her own free will. She wasn't lying when she said she was basically gone from the moment she met him—it was automatic, like a moth moving closer and closer to the flame that will ultimately be its undoing. 

Ben’s flashy black sports car is sliding into its proper parking space by the time she is finished cataloguing every single sign she may have missed about his own interest in her. 

Hindsight is 20/20, but she is ready for a bit of fucking x-ray vision. 

She has only been to his place once before when he was out of town and Han had to stop by to make sure a delivery, surely something extremely expensive by the sight of his entryway alone, made it inside without being pilfered by any number of hooligans or ruffians roaming the area. 

Seeing the rest of it makes her worry about leaving a speck of dirt or a few fallen pieces of hair because every single thing in there is perfectly in place. 

As if he can sense her unease, Ben pauses behind her to set down the bag and the pie with little regard for the mess he's making, but that doesn't mean she's alright with it. Her fingers pick up stray crumbs on his countertop. 

“What’s wrong? Everything okay?” His body is plastered to her back while his arms twine around her midsection, causing a horde of butterflies to scurry and flap around her stomach and create enough of a ruckus that she is starting to believe internal tornados to be a real thing. 

“Just thinking, mostly,” she whispers softly to him. 

“Mostly?” 

Turning around in his grasp, her arms magnetically find their way around his neck, bringing them close enough for her to give him an eskimo kiss while standing up on the tips of her toes. “Thinking about you and all the moments we could've already had by now.” 

Their foreheads touch as he leans down to fully engulf her into his blisteringly hot body. 

“Let’s start one right now,” he pleads with her. 

Once again, he heaves her body up into his arms as if it's easy—like her weight is negligible in the grand scheme of things and holding her so tightly gives him balance that he otherwise lacks. 

He said something similar to her once after he got thoroughly trashed at his uncle’s funeral and she had to corral him into one of Han and Leia's guest rooms, possibly the same one they intended to let her use tonight. 

“I’m game,” she retorts from her spot held high above it all. 

Is this how queens feel when they're treasured by all the citizenry? Monarchies are ridiculous and all, but this… there is something to this. Something to having her clothes taken off like she's one of the world’s most valuable and lost treasures finally come to light. 

If there are tears in her eyes when he stands to his full height, fully exposed and still ridiculously beautiful with all his scars, moles, and imperfections—well, it's been a day. 

No excuse needed. 

He draws a hot bath in his massive soaker tub, helping her climb in after he positions himself to drag her lithe form into his lap and his arms, and they both sigh as the water starts to ease away the chill and three years worth of tension.

“Merry Christmas, Rey,” Ben breathes into her hair. “Thank you for finally giving me the one gift that's been on my list for years.” 

The first knot eases out of her shoulder, causing her to fully slump back into him. “Thanks for coming over to warm me up.”


End file.
